How do you actually make a campaign setting?

[Agrippa]

I just want to know how anyone here managed to make any campaign settings of their own. Just how do you force your self to finish making a world, or even just part of it like a town or region? I have ideas, I'm just not very good at putting them to paper. How does anyone do this without help? I can't do that. It just seems too much for one person to do alone, and I'm afraid I'll forget what I'm trying to make if I don't have it down. So what's the secret to making a campaign setting and keeping your cool in the process?

[hjmartin70]

Usually, I take a grandiose idea or two and start designing an entire world. Complete with multiple cultures, species and pantheons. I quickly get in over my head and after a good bit of work, it goes back on the shelf until I forget about it. I have managed to come up with two successful campaign settings* and both times the method was the same. Pick a starting dungeon module, either pre-made or home-brew and use the setting of that module as the beginning of your world. Keep notes as you go of every NPC and plot hook you can. Let the PCs go where ever and do what ever they want and worry about how to explain it later. You will trap yourself into plots you don't want to run and illogical back-story left and right. Don't sweat it, just keep it fun. Think about it, how much of a 11th century peasant or knight's idea of what was going on matched what was really going on? Or even made sense? Try and stay internally consistent and don't sweat it too much. You will still wind up doing way too much work and your players will never see even half of it. Use random tables from anywhere as much as possible, and get good at making up semi-plausible explanations.

*successful campaign settings defined as played from 1st to name level by a majority of the players who started and a good time had by all

[Agrippa]

I'm working on it some more. With that said I really like one of Exalted's names for adventurers, scavanger lords. The problem is how do I use that title in universe for my setting.

[merias]

What hjmartin70 said - start small, and let the setting grow organically as the players explore it. It's a given that your players will give you ideas during play that you never thought of, those can be incorporated into future sessions, or even the current one on-the-fly. Start with a town name, an Inn, and a road or two out of town into the wilds and a nearby dungeon/ruin whatever. The LL tools at the Wizardawn site can be very useful in creating that initial small setting (http://wizardawn.and-mag.com/rpg_lablord.php).

[hjmartin70]

I'm working on it some more. With that said I really like one of Exalted's names for adventurers, scavanger lords. The problem is how do I use that title in universe for my setting.

Scavanger Lords is an awesome title for a campaign. How about a fantasy version of Gamma World? Two or three great empires slagged the entire world in a massive magical world war, maybe one or two generations ago. The magical monsters created are still settling down into their ecological niches and some that may wind up extinct are still around and deadly dangerous. Areas where the magic is exhausted, where the fae kill humans on sight... All kinds of possibilities there. The way to power is finding powerful magic in the wasteland and using to help (or enslave) your fellow beings.

[Vile]

I would advise you to actually start big and then scale down. You need a loose overview of the world for yourself, just as a framework so you can relate your adventures to a larger world and the game doesn't feel like nothing exists outside the immediate adventure. But that big framework can be pretty loose, and the details can be flexible until the player characters actually interact with them. Even things they've heard about but not encountered can be changed, because information about far-off places can be as true or false as you want them to be.

So keep your detailed world building to the immediate area of the campaign, but do keep a notebook or folder full of ugly, messy, for-your-eyes-only notes about the larger world as you think of them (and discard them if you think of something better).

[Agrippa]

I'm going to make special folder for my campaign setting and file my setting work there. As for my Burrwood setting the world is more advanced than most, but that doesn't mean there aren't ancient treasures and relics waiting to be found. That's the self styled scavenger lords are for, digging up relics of the past. Now you might say "Aren't some of these ancient artifacts magical? If so why hasn't that ancient culture advanced much farther than it had?" It's very simple, Hero of Alexandria invented the steam engine, wind wheel and other highly advanced mechanical devices. However his steam engine prototype wasn't strong enough be used for practical applications, which no one wanted because they had slaves to do hard labor. The ancients were just too lazy or ill equipped to industrialize magic, which doesn't this age from trying.

While the Burrwood setting is mostly focused on the mortal inhabitants of the world I do feel the need to explain the nature of the gods a little bit. In the setting I'm trying to build gods are basically humans writ large, with all of humanity's virtues and vices. They're fallible and can even die. In fact the mighty rulers of the heavens aren't typical of godhood, the same way mighty heroes are atypical of mankind and other mortal races. Most gods aren't on par with the Olympians or the main pantheons of real world myth. Think more along the lines of nymphs or guardian spirits than heavenly rulers. In addition fairies and demons are the respective earthly and infernal answers to the gods. Gods tend towards light and Law, demons to darkness and Chaos and fairies are of roughly equal mix of light, dark and twilight (both light and dark) as well as Law, Neutrality and Chaos.